The unfortunate reality of being at the mercy of cloud service providers…

In the 60s, 70s and early 80s, most computing was done "in the cloud"[1]. The principal reason people in companies jumped on PCs was because they allowed individuals to gain control over their own data; they were no longer held hostage by their data being in silos owned by other companies.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

[1] called "timesharing bureaux".

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There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.Gliding aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".Having fun doing more, with less

... and you are in a rush to modify your pcb.So you start your EDA and then this happens...

Erf... This is exactly why I won't do cloud-based (aka "thin client", aka "dumb terminal accessing a mainframe") software, even if the value proposition is otherwise compelling. Thanks for posting this.

Yeah I don't do cloud, other than as a backup solution for files I want to access elsewhere. I flat out refuse to rent software, I won't support that business model, not gonna happen.

Resistance is futile.It is the business model that most companies will move to.It provides clearer visibility of consistent revenue.

Not saying I like it any more than you… Just reality unfortunately.

I don't think resistance is futile. While companies focus less on innovation (which becomes less necessary as products mature) it gives the open source alternatives more time to catch up. Today I can do far more of my work using free/open source software than I could a decade ago and that is only going to continue. Why would I rent software when I can get something for free that does everything I need it to do?

In the 60s, 70s and early 80s, most computing was done "in the cloud"[1]. The principal reason people in companies jumped on PCs was because they allowed individuals to gain control over their own data; they were no longer held hostage by their data being in silos owned by other companies.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

[1] called "timesharing bureaux".

Indeed. I have been in the computer business more than 30 years now. Like the pendulum in fashion where skirt hems rise and fall, so computing has the pendulum that swings back and forth between thin client and thick client. The cloud is merely the most recent version of thin client. When customers realize they want to control their own computers and data, the pendulum will swing back to thick client.

The most compelling reason I have heard for using the cloud boils down to the idea that you can cut down your capital budget and allocate more to your operations budget. It's all accounting shenanigans. Nothing will change the cloud faster than a change in tax law...

+1 for -Rot in hell before I go cloud AND rent software. It's bad enough that my CAD program MUST connect to their license server before use - there's been a couple incidents whentheir server was down, and I was up shlt creek without a paddle. When I complained on the forums, I was removed from them :-) .. and now I get NO replies from support emails.So, if one day they decide to close it down, my canoe is suddenly full of holes ! Dongles are even stoopider.

Remember a few years ago when MS Money locked people out of their accounts? Or way back when Hotmail tried to convert from Unix to Windows?Several co-workers last year had Apple move their files to icloud.If everyone donated even a 10th of what they would pay for software licensing to open source projects we'd all come out way ahead.

Doesn't look too complicated, many steps seems to be optional and for companies with employees, and an IT department which manages the $$$k AutoCAD etc. packages and users.

I'm still happy with my Eagle 6, but I won't upgrade to the subscription version. I used Eagle for 20 years now, starting with the DOS version, but in the last weeks I tried KiCad and it has some quirks, but looks usable. Will try it for new projects. And another good thing is that if I don't like a quirk, now I can fix it myself (being mostly a programmer).

I am just getting back into electronics after being out for almost a decade. I was going to buy Eagle (what would have been their $1100 layout and schematic license), but no longer. Autodesk and subscription based licensing; two major negatives for me, especially after previously having to deal with them for Maya and Combustion in the past (3d and video compositing).

It is looking like DipTrace or Circuitstudio are the way for me to go; leaning towards DipTrace.

I'm still happy with my Eagle 6, but I won't upgrade to the subscription version. I used Eagle for 20 years now, starting with the DOS version, but in the last weeks I tried KiCad and it has some quirks, but looks usable. Will try it for new projects. And another good thing is that if I don't like a quirk, now I can fix it myself (being mostly a programmer).

Eagle has quirks too, you just don't notice them anymore after using it for 20 years. You get the same way after using KiCad for a while.

I tried out every EDA I could get my hands on about 8-9 years ago and came to the conclusion that they all suck, but once you get past the very limited hobbyist oriented products they will pretty much all do the job when you figure out how to work with them.

The solution to that particular error is to log out of your version 8.0.0 and then start 8.0.1. That's what worked for another user and I think it will work for you.

This sounds like you are forced to accept the update to a new version to continue working, something you said would not be required in that (overly long/overly bitter) thread on Autodesk taking over EAGLE.

The solution to that particular error is to log out of your version 8.0.0 and then start 8.0.1. That's what worked for another user and I think it will work for you.

This sounds like you are forced to accept the update to a new version to continue working, something you said would not be required in that (overly long/overly bitter) thread on Autodesk taking over EAGLE.

So, please clarify what is going on here.

Hi MagicSmoker,

Basically, you can only be signed in to one version of Autodesk EAGLE on the same computer. So if you are using 8.0.1 and want to use 8.0.0 sign out of 8.0.1 and then start 8.0.0. 8.0.0 will ask you to sign in again that's all.

You can continue to use both without issue, if you have both then you have to do a sign out operation in one in order to switch to the other.

On the Autodesk forums, we posted a couple of possible solutions for this. Check the following:

1) See if you have Lavasoft Ad-aware installed (it comes pre-installed with some Lenovo laptops), the Web companion feature interferes with EAGLE. Disabling it, allows EAGLE to start. If you don't need it then just uninstall it.

2) What type of Video card do you have? Is it a Radeon series card? If it is you may have to update your drivers.

We can't do anything about #1, however we are working on something to address #2.

We are working on improving Linux support by supporting a few mainstream distros. Fedora is being analyzed for inclusion at this point in time. It is possible to get EAGLE to run on Fedora by following the steps outlined in the README and symlinking a few libraries.

The Linux community is so fragmented that it's almost impossible to support all distributions. Users of Linux are used to getting their hands dirty so if a user is going to use something outside the list of distros(kernels, libc, etc.) that we support, than there is a possibility that they will have to do something special to get EAGLE to run.

The Linux community is so fragmented that it's almost impossible to support all distributions. Users of Linux are used to getting their hands dirty so if a user is going to use something outside the list of distros(kernels, libc, etc.) that we support, than there is a possibility that they will have to do something special to get EAGLE to run.

This was rarely a problem with version 7 & 6.

The problems started with V8 because Autodesk thought it was good idea not to link static anymore.

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

The problems started with V8 because Autodesk thought it was good idea not to link static anymore.

One reason I always liked Eagle was that it was rock solid. It never crashed or destroyed my design files, unlike what I've heard from e.g. Altium Designer. Another reason now to switch to something free like KiCad.

1) See if you have Lavasoft Ad-aware installed (it comes pre-installed with some Lenovo laptops), the Web companion feature interferes with EAGLE. Disabling it, allows EAGLE to start. If you don't need it then just uninstall it.

We can't do anything about #1,

If that is true, how is it possible that V6 & 7 runs fine?

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

1) See if you have Lavasoft Ad-aware installed (it comes pre-installed with some Lenovo laptops), the Web companion feature interferes with EAGLE. Disabling it, allows EAGLE to start. If you don't need it then just uninstall it.

We can't do anything about #1,

If that is true, how is it possible that V6 & 7 runs fine?

Hello Karel,

I meant it in the sense that LavaSoft is a third party software and the fact that there code interferes with ours is something that we can't force them to fix. We can't mess with their code base.

Under the hood there have been many changes between EAGLE V7 and the new Autodesk EAGLE, those changes have introduced some growing pains that we have to sort out now in order to continue to develop EAGLE further.

My experience of software which went this way is they will keep on increasing the fee overtime to 'upgrade' to the latest version. So you end up spending just as much as having a subscription. One product cost a few hundred originally now costs about 12k to buy/upgrade, about 10 years later. They know they will not sell to new customers, who will just opt for a different cheaper product. But there is a large enough existing user base who have to factor in the time and cost of converting existing projects to a different product.

But if you have a perpetual license, it doesn't matter what it costs to upgrade unless you actually need some new feature and that's getting rarer all the time. That's the reason of course that the rental model is gaining popularity with software developers. It's the only way they can keep you paying.

So the above fix is stating that a component of AdAware, which monitors web traffic blocks the program (causing grief) because it appears to mimic a datamining piece of malware, needs to be disabled.

The first question to be asked, is what exactly is Eagle doing which needs to be calling home in this manner?

Suppose it's AdAware being hypersensitive. Am I going to have this problem when my IT guys have the firewall settings clamping down something brutal, and I'm powerless to change that?Never been a problem with EagleV7 and earlier.

So the above fix is stating that a component of AdAware, which monitors web traffic blocks the program (causing grief) because it appears to mimic a datamining piece of malware, needs to be disabled.

The first question to be asked, is what exactly is Eagle doing which needs to be calling home in this manner?

Suppose it's AdAware being hypersensitive. Am I going to have this problem when my IT guys have the firewall settings clamping down something brutal, and I'm powerless to change that?Never been a problem with EagleV7 and earlier.

Hi XFDDesign,

To be specific, the encounter with EAGLE causes Lavasoft to run into a divide by zero error . If you look through the Lavasoft forums you'll find that users have experienced this issue with other software.

As has already been mentioned, EAGLE on startup checks for a valid license from the Autodesk servers so it is at that point that it calls home.

Now, for the most important question. If the IT guys go hardcore on the firewall settings, then it's likely that a proxy server is available to you(Considering Microsoft and Adobe have gone subscription as well it's likely that EAGLE isn't your IT team's first rodeo) EAGLE can use that validate your license. Additionally the ports used by EAGLE to check the license are standard HTTPS ports that most department have available.

If neither of those two options work than e-mail [email protected] and we could address it further.

As has already been mentioned, EAGLE on startup checks for a valid license from the Autodesk servers so it is at that point that it calls home.

Well, if it calls home only at startup, one solution to the problem would be to install it inside a VM, start it once, then never end it and freeze the VM when you need to shutdown your computer. No need for an internet connection anymore, and would save the annual fee as well

Now, for the most important question. If the IT guys go hardcore on the firewall settings, then it's likely that a proxy server is available to you(Considering Microsoft and Adobe have gone subscription as well it's likely that EAGLE isn't your IT team's first rodeo) EAGLE can use that validate your license. Additionally the ports used by EAGLE to check the license are standard HTTPS ports that most department have available.

Clearly you guys have never dealt with national labs or defense contractor or other users with, shall we say, very severe security restrictions, if this is your response.

Now, for the most important question. If the IT guys go hardcore on the firewall settings, then it's likely that a proxy server is available to you(Considering Microsoft and Adobe have gone subscription as well it's likely that EAGLE isn't your IT team's first rodeo) EAGLE can use that validate your license. Additionally the ports used by EAGLE to check the license are standard HTTPS ports that most department have available.

Clearly you guys have never dealt with national labs or defense contractor or other users with, shall we say, very severe security restrictions, if this is your response.

Hi Bassman59,

I hope you're doing well. You forgot to quote the rest of the response where I said that if either of those two options were not viable to contact us for further support. Outside of those two circumstances we have to look deeper, I can't cover every scenario in a forum post so I went with the most common situations.

Doesn't look too complicated, many steps seems to be optional and for companies with employees, and an IT department which manages the $$$k AutoCAD etc. packages and users.

I'm still happy with my Eagle 6, but I won't upgrade to the subscription version. I used Eagle for 20 years now, starting with the DOS version, but in the last weeks I tried KiCad and it has some quirks, but looks usable. Will try it for new projects. And another good thing is that if I don't like a quirk, now I can fix it myself (being mostly a programmer).

To be specific, the encounter with EAGLE causes Lavasoft to run into a divide by zero error . If you look through the Lavasoft forums you'll find that users have experienced this issue with other software.

As has already been mentioned, EAGLE on startup checks for a valid license from the Autodesk servers so it is at that point that it calls home.

But that's the wiggle isn't it? Plenty of other software 'calls home' and doesn't convince AdAware to divide by zero. What is going on under the hood that is unique to the degree it results in mutually assured death, and is common to these other packages of software you refer to? The Ford Pinto was not the only model car to be a firehazard, but pointing out that there are other cars which have similar fire-hazard susceptibility doesn't negate the fact that the root hazard is still there. With as little information AD provides to what goes on, and their own past history, there isn't any trust here to begin with.

I guess AdAware monitors the internet traffic and then does some analysis on the data. There are many reasons for division by zero, like the programmer expected something from a regexp, then dividing something by this result to calculate some average. But analyzing the exact data and reverse-engineering the code could be a lot of work. Maybe Autodesk can send AdAware an Eagle license, so that their developers can see the bug inside an IDE, which then should be a matter of seconds to fix it and would benefit both companies, because the bug could happen with any software.

If you're really down to asking such ridiculous first tier tech support questions, all hope is lost. Start by assuming the user is capable of connecting their computer to the internet, and forget the details, they are irrelevant to your application.

I'm trying to help you get up and running, however that doesn't seem to be what you are interested in right now. EAGLE still works and there are many people still working with it. They way I look at it, you have a choice to make. If you decide to continue to work with EAGLE, then I can assure you that myself and the rest of the support staff will do everything we can to resolve any technical issues that may come up.

If you want help with getting EAGLE to work then I'm happy to help, otherwise there's not much I can do for you.

If you're really down to asking such ridiculous first tier tech support questions, all hope is lost. Start by assuming the user is capable of connecting their computer to the internet, and forget the details, they are irrelevant to your application.

Hi Monkeh,

You can't assume anything, even in a technically savvy community like this one. Sometimes the smallest details are the ones that cause the biggest issues, in his post Karel provided nothing other than a picture. With no other information I chose to start with the simplest points. EAGLE runs on three different operating system families and each one is a minefield in it's own delightful way

I dislike Autodesk's transition to the subscription model as much as anyone here (and don't plan to switch to it at all). But Jorge is not to blame for this. He continues to offer honest technical support, in a situation where his job satisfaction must be way down. Let's be civilized here, can't we? If you have to let off steam, there's always Matt to complain to, who is actually in charge of the business side...

EAGLE runs on three different operating system families and each one is a minefield in it's own delightful way

Hi Jorge,

This was never a problem with V7 & V6.The problems started to arise with V8. So far, most of the programming work done since autodesk aquired Cadsoft Eaglehas been to make the subscription and internet license check work. And the result is a big mess.

Hope that clarifies things.

Let me know if there's anything I can do for you.

Best Regards,Karel

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

I completely agree. I've known Jorge on other EAGLE forums for a couple of years and he's always really helpful and exceedingly patient when dealing with a wide range of EAGLE users and skill levels. He doesn't deserve to take flack when he's just trying to help.

I don't envy his position. When I was a teenager I worked for a stint at a local fast food joint. When I worked counter or window and there was a mistake on an order, I was the one who got yelled at by the customer. It wasn't my fault, I didn't make his burger, but I was the one facing the customers so I had to deal with it.

I don't envy his position. When I was a teenager I worked for a stint at a local fast food joint. When I worked counter or window and there was a mistake on an order, I was the one who got yelled at by the customer. It wasn't my fault, I didn't make his burger, but I was the one facing the customers so I had to deal with it.

At some point, though, you have to wonder if your employer has your back. If the burgers are coming out tasting like dish soap...

At some point, though, you have to wonder if your employer has your back. If the burgers are coming out tasting like dish soap...

Well, yeah, and I could complain about it and upper management would defend their decision and if I kept complaining about it I'd be out of a job. Not a big deal for a kid making just over minimum wage but at some point in life it starts to matter more. Every job I've ever worked had some degree of corporate BS, even switching jobs is likely to replace one variety of BS with another.

Yes, I noticed this with github, too, apparently they use Amazon cloud services for their release download servers, so I couldn't download a release for a software (not related to Eagle). Was offline yesterday for 4 hours:

quote: "Amazon wasn't able to update its own service health dashboard for the first two hours of the outage because the dashboard itself was hosted on AWS." Brilliant idea to host the AWS outage dashboard on AWS

So there were problems on 5 days last year. Maybe better use Google cloud?

So there were problems on 5 days last year. Maybe better use Google cloud?

The only reliable solution is to revert to the old license system.

Even if that were to happen (which Autodesk has said is "non-negotiable") it would be too late of solution for me or the others who've jumped on the Altium Circuit Studio $495 deal or the Designer 40% offer. Learning curve is not too bad, and well, Eagle doesn't have enough going for it to lure people back once they've switched away, IMHO.

This is not the first time that Amazon Cloud had this problem. There is even a website which monitors and counts the problems: [...]So there were problems on 5 days last year. Maybe better use Google cloud?

Amazon really does give you all the tools to have a resilient, distributed infrastructure with no shared failure domains. They offer something like 15 isolated geographic regions, many with multiple individual datacenters within the region. If you do things properly, creating infrastructure is programmatic, so it becomes more a question of design and automation rather than manual effort to establish services in another region.

Unfortunately most people don't take advantage of the platform and just stick all their infrastructure in one region. Usually the oldest and least reliable one, us-east-1 (N. Virginia), which is where almost all of the outages occur. When people suffer outages on AWS it is almost always because of bad design, rather than a lack of tools to stay operating and available. Individual "cloud" resources are supposed to be unreliable and disposable, by design, but not a lot of people really get that. It is conceptually easier for people to design things where they don't have to deal with the concept of dynamic resources, networking between regions, replication strategies, redundant DNS providers, etc.

This will be the same whether you are on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. AWS just has the largest customer base, and thus the most people yelling when they shoot themselves in the foot by not having a proper architecture or DR strategy.

Even if that were to happen (which Autodesk has said is "non-negotiable") it would be too late of solution for me or the others who've jumped on the Altium Circuit Studio $495 deal or the Designer 40% offer. Learning curve is not too bad, and well, Eagle doesn't have enough going for it to lure people back once they've switched away, IMHO.

Definitely.Once Eagle lose customers, that's it, they won't be back. They will have rely on new subs. The current Circuit Studio license + maintenance is cheaper than a year or so of Eagle subscription, so I can't see how Eagle can compete with that?

It is conceptually easier for people to design things where they don't have to deal with the concept of dynamic resources, networking between regions, replication strategies, redundant DNS providers, etc.

This will be the same whether you are on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. AWS just has the largest customer base, and thus the most people yelling when they shoot themselves in the foot by not having a proper architecture or DR strategy.

Isn't the management of dynamic resources and all the other things essentially what makes the cloud, a cloud? Where all the detail is hidden away so as to make detailed attention from the customer unnecessary.

It isn't perfectly clear that you are not placing the responsibility for managing reliability onto the customers shoulders. Something which customers are seeking to avoid by buying cloud services.

Isn't the management of dynamic resources and all the other things essentially what makes the cloud, a cloud? Where all the detail is hidden away so as to make detailed attention from the customer unnecessary.

Isn't the management of dynamic resources and all the other things essentially what makes the cloud, a cloud? Where all the detail is hidden away so as to make detailed attention from the customer unnecessary.

It isn't perfectly clear that you are not placing the responsibility for managing reliability onto the customers shoulders. Something which customers are seeking to avoid by buying cloud services.

Well, it would be nice, but as far as the cloud platform (infrastructure) is concerned, that is observably untrue. Not having to care about the reliability of the underlying resources is a good end-user experience for someone consuming an application run on cloud services, but the people doing the running absolutely have to account for failure, which coincidentally is largely the same problem as providing horizontal scalability for serving increasing (or globally distributed) load.

For example, look at the NIST definition of cloud computing. Cloud computing is defined by its on-demand, utility model for provisioning computing resources. Reliability is not even mentioned.

Since cloud computing centers around on-demand, scalable resources, these resources are generally less reliable than a traditional enterprise datacenter model. In the traditional enterprise model, great care and expense is taken to try and make individual servers (or VMs) as reliable as possible. You have highly overbuilt, fault tolerant hardware, and hypervisors like VMware that take care of making individual virtual machines fault tolerant at a software level. But this involves high dollar amounts, isn't generally scalable on demand (to meet varying or unexpected load), and still has ultimate limits to its reliability. For example, you can spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on enterprise grade hardware, but it doesn't stop an earthquake (or someone tripping and hitting the emergency power-off) from taking down the physical datacenter. It's also not as practical to just build in another floor to your datacenter and fork lift in a bunch of servers if you're expecting more traffic next week.

In the cloud model, the resources are designed to be disposable: if a VM fails, you simply replace it with another one. Relying on the functioning or state of an individual VM (or data center, or regional service) is not in keeping with the model of how those resources were designed to be consumed. Services like AWS provide building blocks that people can use to construct reliable services, but they don't provide anything like the concept of individual services with 100% reliability. For a variety of reasons, that just isn't a practical model. The VMs are run on cheap, plentiful, bottom dollar hardware, and reliability becomes the responsibility of the application rather than the infrastructure.

This is something that Amazon is pretty up front about (e.g. Building Fault-Tolerant Applications on AWS, Architecting for the Cloud), but again, there are a lot of misconceptions about what it means to move to a cloud model. People who aren't ready to architect around failure in their application would be better suited with a traditional managed service provider that caters to older enterprise-type applications, and will work with them to manage DR. They move to a cloud provider without being able to handle it, because it looks cheap, and then they complain when their application becomes unreliable.

Not sure about Google, but Azure have had far more than their fair share of outages, ISTR DNS config changes being the route cause of one or two of them. DNS is itself is a nightmarish risk when combined with fat fingers. Edit: since I started writing this post yesterday, looks like Office 365 has been out again although it's not clear if this is just retail or enterprise too.

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the most people yelling when they shoot themselves in the foot by not having a proper architecture or DR strategy.

I agree, but using the same provider for your production and DR does not remove common mode failure when they are using distributed configs, and as a punter you won't have any visibility of those changes in the cloud anyway until it breaks. To do DR "properly" in the cloud necessarily makes it expensive if you're to avoid such failures, and in many cases it won't save you a dime, and can be more expensive if you end up using multiple cloud vendors to spread and reduce risk.

With cloud, the devil is in the detail. Regrettably many IT managers and management consultants who don't do detail have difficulty understanding and analysing the technical risks, but it's OK, typically they'll have floated off to their next engagement once it's too late and they've left there slug trail of destruction behind them.

On the other side of the coin, there are definitely certain situations putting non-critical and non-core services in the cloud can make a lot of sense financially. If your business can take a half day or day's hit every now and then, then that's fine. But it's very brave to risk your core business offerings there without a full understanding of the risks involved, including service level RTO & RPO, offshoring of data, and even placing data locally in the hands of an entity with foreign interests allowing foreign jurisdictions to exercise access to that data without you being aware.

Ah, yes, that outage was quite notorious, but it was contained to S3 in us-east-1 (N. Virginia). I've never seen a systemic failure in AWS that crossed a region boundary. Having discussed it with their engineers previously, the "control plane" (software, configuration, management) is segmented by region (a region being a geographical center with a set of one or more "availability zone" datacenters), with few if any dependencies between regions, for exactly that purpose -- to avoid systemic failures across the whole platform. So anyone who had a proper DR strategy in place with replication of S3 objects between regions and a solid (DNS, CDN, etc.) failover method in place was not affected.

This includes the rather large set of AWS infrastructure I am responsible for, so the "AWS outage" was a complete non-event for me. That was also good because I was on vacation!

Not sure about Google, but Azure have had far more than their fair share of outages, ISTR DNS config changes being the route cause of one or two of them. DNS is itself is a nightmarish risk when combined with fat fingers. Edit: since I started writing this post yesterday, looks like Office 365 has been out again although it's not clear if this is just retail or enterprise too.

I agree, Azure is not quite as mature as AWS from an availability or a services standpoint. There has been a lot of churn in their platform implementation in the last few years. Of course trying to make the traditional Microsoft services (AD, SQL server, etc.) both elastically scalable and highly available is also very challenging in ways that AWS doesn't have to deal with. Microsoft has a lot of baggage there.

O365 especially is notoriously unreliable, and unless you are lucky enough to have a direct line into Microsoft, support is horrible.

I agree, but using the same provider for your production and DR does not remove common mode failure when they are using distributed configs, and as a punter you won't have any visibility of those changes in the cloud anyway until it breaks. To do DR "properly" in the cloud necessarily makes it expensive if you're to avoid such failures, and in many cases it won't save you a dime, and can be more expensive if you end up using multiple cloud vendors to spread and reduce risk.

Right, I mean, if you want to be ideally protected you have vendor diversity, control plane diversity, geographical diversity of your administrative team, etc. It can get impractical. But even solely within AWS, taking advantage of the region partitioning (above) and carefully considering your other points of failure (like DNS) gets you most of the way there in terms of practical uptime; meaning five-nines (99.999%) availability of the infrastructure in aggregate is quite achievable. Availability at that point ceases to become an infrastructure issue and tends to become more of an application reliability issue.

But you're still worlds apart from a traditional enterprise datacenter solution. As expensive as DR is in AWS, traditional DR is even moreso, since you're on the hook for the costs of the datacenter facilities and hardware up front, whether you are using it or not.

Some workloads are definitely better left local. But I'd still say that the expertise necessary to competently run a physical datacenter, with all the facilities maintenance, networking, and systems design concerns still presents a large and tangible risk as well. Entire datacenters become disabled all the time due to generator failures, bad UPS maintenance, cooling issues, cheap and poor networking design, limited upstream capacity and DDoSes, etc. So many people and so much expertise is required just to keep the lights on, and most companies aren't willing to do it properly.

Five nines type availability is a difficult engineering exercise no matter which way you do it, but for the competent and informed I still think services like AWS make it more accessible.

We apologize for interrupting your workflow, as you have noted the issue has been solved.I am trying to find out what caused it, the developers did their best to get it up and runningas fast as possible blah blah blah...

We apologize for interrupting your workflow, as you have noted the issue has been solved.I am trying to find out what caused it, the developers did their best to get it up and runningas fast as possible blah blah blah...

Wow... this is incredible. Even if you are just an isolated case it still gives me the chills to see these kinds of issues. When I am working on a board I *really* don't want to be interrupted, whether or not there is an external deadline bearing down on me.

Just to follow up, the outage that Karel is referring to was resolved within a few hours and today everything is working as expected.

As always let me know if there's anything I can do for you guys.

Best Regards,Jorge Garcia

Hi Jorge,

Why are you saying this? That it was solved "in a few hours" does it make less important?What about the lost productivity? Doesn't it proof that Eagle v8 is unreliable? Not now and not in the future?We never had those kind of problems with versions before v8.

What about all the other problems (blank screen, proxy/firewall).What about the fact that v8 users are guinea pigs for autodesk?

Let me know if there's something else I can do for you.

Best Regards,Karel

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

They get it. They know the change in licencing is near universally unpopular with established users. They know they've lost business and goodwill. They know that a big portion of users will head to other software. There's been no indication of a backtrack through Jorge or Matt B. This is their decision. I don't agree with it, and I'm a bit sad my investment into their software has hit a dead end. Like many others, I will continue to use my v7.7 and transition to something else when/if I need to. In the meantime I hope the old forums and archives of ULPs/scripts remain accessible.

I'd be happy to be surprised, but don't think its likely. How long did the about-face take when this happened the last time?

It's so much uglier since they said just a few months earlier that subscription model was not even being considered. What a load of horseshit. They (as in upper management at least) knew damn well that was the plan, unless they are grossly incompetent and acquired Eagle without having a plan. They lied to placate the existing customer base.

I hope you're having a good day. This is an issue between the nouveau graphics driver and Qt. They are aware of this issue and are working on a fix, you can see the bug report here.https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-41242

There are a few workarounds on that bug report which may help getting EAGLE to work on your system. If you are open to the idea of using a different video driver then that may be the simplest solution although, I understand that is not an option for everyone.

I hope you're having a good day. This is an issue between the nouveau graphics driver and Qt. They are aware of this issue and are working on a fix, you can see the bug report here.https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-41242

The bug is marked as critical, but open since 2014. I guess this could take a while

I hope you're having a good day. This is an issue between the nouveau graphics driver and Qt. They are aware of this issue and are working on a fix, you can see the bug report here.https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-41242

There are a few workarounds on that bug report which may help getting EAGLE to work on your system. If you are open to the idea of using a different video driver then that may be the simplest solution although, I understand that is not an option for everyone.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,Jorge Garcia

Hi Jorge,

I hope you are doing well.All those problems started to arise when autodesk started to touch Eagle.No problems so far with V6 & V7.

The idea to change graphics driver is ridiculous. What's the next step, to change operating system?

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Kind Regards,Karel

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

We don't use an alpha version of Qt for EAGLE. However, Qt like most projects shows when the bug was first discovered since the case is still open it means this is still an issue. If you read through the comments fixes for the issue exist they just haven't been pushed upstream, from the little I read of their discussion it seems to be a politics issue with the main dev of the Nouveau driver.

In any case, there are ways to deal with the issue in the meantime so it's possible to get EAGLE running in environments that use that driver.

As many issues as I have with what Autodesk is doing with Eagle, this is not an Eagle issue or even a Qt issue: This is Nouveau not being ready for use. It is not Autodesk's fault that the driver you choose to use is not ready for use in the real world.

As many issues as I have with what Autodesk is doing with Eagle, this is not an Eagle issue or even a Qt issue: This is Nouveau not being ready for use. It is not Autodesk's fault that the driver you choose to use is not ready for use in the real world.

Albeit I agree with you, at least partly, the fact remains that V6 & V7 works fine with the Nouveau driver.In the past, Cadsoft did most (if not all) of the development on Linux and because of that, bugs were catched in an early stadium.

It is autodesk who decided to completely change their development and testing process.

It is autodesk who decided to rip apart Eagle and build it up again and use paying clients to be their guinea pigs.

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

Albeit I agree with you, at least partly, the fact remains that V6 & V7 works fine with the Nouveau driver.In the past, Cadsoft did most (if not all) of the development on Linux and because of that, bugs were catched in an early stadium.

Does Eagle (both Cadsoft and Autodesk versions) documentation mention anything about the type of Linux machines they support i.e. do they explicitly mention that they are certified to work only with certain gfx cards or gfx drivers?

What Autodesk should have done is killed the Eagle product, and used the corpse to create a newly branded product.

Had they done this...1. They wouldn't have lied about Eagle never becoming a ransomware kit.2. All the new bugs they jammed into it would be justified as "new software." This way what used to work, and doesn't now, is swept up under 'new software, we're working on it.' 3. they wouldn't have the explicit backlash from the existing user base for breaking what worked. The rotten carrot they could offer as what Eagle 8 now is, would be offered for people who wanted to 'migrate' to something that is 'backwards compatible with eagle 7'.

In essence, this is what's happened anyway. The old EAGLE is dead as we knew it, or not dead, but going nowhere fast.

I think the expectation was that everybody would blindly transition to the subscription model. The flawed analogy of a cup of coffee being cheaper was instantly dismissed. I also found the tone of Matt B's posts quite combative and overly defensive -- not a good look!

Only Autodesk/CADsoft/whoever has the real numbers on users and the categories they belong to. Maybe an "affordable" subscription model would be a nice enticement for all of those hobby users to finally upgrade to a paid version. But for anyone who had already paid into the perpetual licence, it's a big slap in the face both financially and from a trust perspective. They are the ones who supported development over many years (and not receiving much in return I might add), and they will be the first to leave for something else, as painful as learning a new CAD is.

If they don't mention any specifics then that means they should support it all. Nouveau is an extremely commonly used driver.

Which is a sad state of affairs because it is barely functional. It simply isn't ready.

I have tried it, on a regular basis, on a wide range of GPU models, for years. It still does not handle multiple displays correctly. It still doesn't do useful power management. It still falls back on CPU acceleration for many tasks.

If they don't mention any specifics then that means they should support it all. Nouveau is an extremely commonly used driver.

Which is a sad state of affairs because it is barely functional. It simply isn't ready.

I have tried it, on a regular basis, on a wide range of GPU models, for years. It still does not handle multiple displays correctly. It still doesn't do useful power management. It still falls back on CPU acceleration for many tasks.

What counts here is if Eagle V7 runs fine with Nouveau.

As far as I know, Eagle never used OpenGL. To make such a big change (to start to use OpenGL) requires a lot of carefull testingand some clear system requirements, including a list of supported and tested platforms.The fact that they didn't, says a lot of the capabilities and professionality of their development team (or management).

And it's not just this. Eagle never used SSL because there was no reason. Now they use openSSL in order to connect to their serversand to check you. They failed miserably because lot's of users couldn't use Eagle anymore because it couldn't find or open the SSL libraries.And there's more stuff going on. They are just a bunch of *** who don't know what they are doing.

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

This bug with Qt and Nouveau makes me wonder about Autodesk's long-term commitment to Linux. I was only able to find one other Autodesk product that also runs natively on Linux, Autodesk Maya. Maybe there are others, but my point is there aren't many when you consider their broad portfolio.

Relative to Mac and Windows, I think Linux users are more likely to reject the rent-ware licensing and this will cause Linux user numbers to further decline.

Clearly the bean counters are in charge of product direction at Autodesk. How long will it take them to declare Linux a poor return on investment?

I think Linux support has an uncertain future.

And before Autodesk protests, I wouldn't trust any promises of continued Linux support as being credible. The licensing issue was "promised" and then not fulfilled.

When I first used EAGLE, I was surprised how cumbersome and awkward it was to use. It's nice to see Autodesk bought it so they can finally drive the last nail into its coffin.

When you find a CAD program that's elegant and intuitive from the very first use, let me know.

One thing you could say about EAGLE is that it was a rock-solid implementation that rarely crashed. Looks like Autodesk has added enough artificial points of failure to remedy that particular condition.

When I first used EAGLE, I was surprised how cumbersome and awkward it was to use. It's nice to see Autodesk bought it so they can finally drive the last nail into its coffin.

When you find a CAD program that's elegant and intuitive from the very first use, let me know.

One thing you could say about EAGLE is that it was a rock-solid implementation that rarely crashed. Looks like Autodesk has added enough artificial points of failure to remedy that particular condition.

The only problem I ever had with Eagle, was that sometimes I would go to pick a part, select it, and then either double-click it or say okay, and it would 'forget' my choice. I would repeat the process a second time and then it would work. It did that some what frequently.

When I first used EAGLE, I was surprised how cumbersome and awkward it was to use. It's nice to see Autodesk bought it so they can finally drive the last nail into its coffin.

When you find a CAD program that's elegant and intuitive from the very first use, let me know.

One thing you could say about EAGLE is that it was a rock-solid implementation that rarely crashed. Looks like Autodesk has added enough artificial points of failure to remedy that particular condition.

I used Eagle for about a month before getting frustrated. Even read some of a book on how to use it. After that, I downloaded the trial for Altium...after a couple days I was significantly more functional in Altium because it works more like a normal piece of software. Not 100% but certainly more than Eagle.

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As someone that was going to purchase Eagle (pre-Autodesk) and ended up with DipTrace, I have to say, I think it all turned out for the best!

I barely read two pages of the tutorial PDF and have already made a few full schematics, boards, components, and patterns without issue. And, after sending off the Gerbers to OSH Park it all turned out exactly as I expected. Their licensing levels are pretty generous as well. I am much happier with the pin limitations than the arbitrary board size limitations.

There is no profit for them to fix the Linux version. All Eagle Linux users already switched to KiCAD

Nope. We are still using V7.7. Do you really think we can just move our company to use Kicad??

We will never use V8 and for the time being, V7 can do everything we want it to do,so for the moment there's no acute problem.Problems will arise if and when we want to hire another engineer, because licenses for V7 are no longer be sold.In that case we probably have to move to Altium or Orcad using Virtualbox... :-(

My last hope is that next year autodesk will sell Eagle to another company that will start to offer perpetual licenses.But we will do no business with autodesk, not after the way they treated us.They have no respect for customers.

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

It may not be trivial, but it can be done. I've seen companies move from one software product to another multiple times with varying degrees of difficulty but they all managed to pull it off. For something like an EDA I would probably start new products in the new software and keep the old software around in some capacity to support existing products. If there are complex designs that need continuing updates and changes then maybe it makes sense to come up with an automated or semi-automated way of converting the files. Effort spent on a transition now is effort saved down the road when you are locked into proprietary rental software with an active interest in making it difficult for you to transition.

I understand that you are upset, you have made that very clear. However, I disagree that Autodesk has mistreated you in anyway. Technically, you haven't lost anything. You still have the V7.7 license you originally paid for and no one will be taking that away from you. The subscription change only applies to Autodesk EAGLE, so you still have exactly what you paid for.

Autodesk does care about it's customers to do othewise just doesn't make business sense. The improvements in EAGLE are a testament to that, the fact that I'm here replying is also testament to that. EAGLE feature wise is far more powerful than it's ever been and all this has happened in less than a year. I know you've been copying issues from the Autodesk forum and posting them here, however you haven't been following up on the resolution of those issues. When Autodesk EAGLE first released it's stability wasn't what users were used to with V7 and prior. On the flip side, there wasn't as much change in EAGLE's codebase prior to Autodesk either so stability was easier to preserve. With that said many of the linux issues have or are being ironed out and every release is better than the last in terms of stability(I run a Linux Mint 18 box with MATE 1.14.2 desktop here). I think there is large Linux market that is a unique opportunity for us to capitalize on, since no other commercial tool natively supports linux(keyword: commercial, KiCAD and GEDA are not commercial entities).

Never say from these waters I will not drink. I haven't heard anyone say they have actually tried the latest 8.1.1 here. You may discover that it's not what you thought it was. EAGLE's file format is XML so you are never truly locked in as can be seen by all of the converters available in other tools. You really have nothing to lose by trying it and then forming an informed opinion.

Just my 2 cents, if they are even worth that much. If you try it and run into any problems I'm here to help.

Jorge, I am glad to hear that Eagle V7.7 (which I also paid for) is still a current and valid product and that you are recommending it for customer use. As Matt has stated before, Autodesk EAGLE (Eagle 8.x) is a different product, not an upgrade from the Eagle V7.7 line. When can I expect the support patch to Eagle V7.7 that fixes the Mac OS bug where the program will sometimes repeatedly crash while zooming unless each window is resized slightly upon startup?

It appears to be 99.9% similar to Eagle 7, plus an internet-tied login wall. No compelling reason or tasty new features, I am already familiar with Eagle and there is nothing new to try.

The Autodesk license still says I will lose access to my Eagle 7 license if I upgrade to Eagle 8, in much the same way that I no longer have an Eagle 5 license after upgrading to Eagle 7. I realize you have said differently on the forums, but the legal document still says otherwise.

...Never say from these waters I will not drink. I haven't heard anyone say they have actually tried the latest 8.1.1 here. You may discover that it's not what you thought it was. EAGLE's file format is XML so you are never truly locked in as can be seen by all of the converters available in other tools. You really have nothing to lose by trying it and then forming an informed opinion. ...

Suppose you had a v7.7 user that signed up for autodesk eagle for a year (or whatever) and proceeded in earnest to give v8.1.1 a chance.

They work with it for a year and decide it's not worth the licensing hassle, or cost for added features, or perhaps some forced upgrade along the way introduces instability with their platform or graphics card. Whatever the reason, they don't want to use the new version anymore.

Over the course of the year they have been saving their work in the native XML format. It's unavoidable that the format of the XML files will be continuously enhanced by autodesk to support saving of files that were produced using the new features.

What guarantees can autodesk make that a user can drop back to 7.7 and not lose a year of work because the XML files are no longer backwards compatible? Sure the new features won't work, but what survives in a .BRD/.SCH file in a downgrade from 8.1.1 to 7.7? And I mean specifically.

I'm interested in the new modularity feature, but not at the cost of a lock in. I'm not seeing your "nothing to lose" scenario. Please explain how it could work with no risk.

Regarding "Never say from these waters I will not drink" Autodesk should sell Eagle to someone who'll sell real licenses, and use the money to help out Flint Michigan's poisoned water problem. Their water department has about a $25 million deficit, which sounds about right. Great PR all around.

. I think there is large Linux market that is a unique opportunity for us to capitalize on, since no other commercial tool natively supports linux(keyword: commercial, KiCAD and GEDA are not commercial entities).

If you can sell EAGLE 8 subscriptions to Linux users, your talents are being grievously underutilized at Autodesk. You're ready for your own 24-hour cable channel.

Yep; this is the flip side:Imagine that you have a deadline, and some ivory tower bureaucrat in your company has decided that you need to switch CAD programs between the EAGLE 8.0 (which you're not using yet anyway) license is "unacceptable." And now you have to learn a new cad program and figure out how to convert your existing designs (which you are "re-using" for your current project) to that new CAD program in addition to doing the new design itself...

This. In some ways I do actually prefer it, because I remember dongles. That only worked if you had the right sort of parallel port, with the right OS drivers, and sometimes only if the wind was right. Until they broke. Then you just had to return the broken dongle and wait for a new one to be sent out. At least with the cloud you usually only have to wait until the internet comes back up, or the provider unborks their server. Rather than until the guy who authorises dongles gets back from holidays (I kid you not).

The stupidest dongle I ever worked with authorised the driver for a ridiculously expensive sheet fed scanner that came with its own interface card. Allegedly SCSI, but scanner was significantly slower with other SCSI cards. With card, 120ppm full duplex A5, or 60ppm A4. We scanned a lot of A5. But when the dongle malfunctioned the thing stopped working until the machine was power cycles. Windows NT with a big RAID array took a long time to power cycle. I was using conductive grease on the parallel port and screwing that thing in hard because that lowered the error rate to about once a day. Happiest day on that job was when someone found a competing scanner without a dongle. Called the company and we had a rep on site within a day with a demo unit. For a $50,000+ scanner you get quite prompt sales calls

\using the same provider for your production and DR does not remove common mode failure ... Never forget that the internet does not have an SLA.

You can have a lot of fun trying to provide robust, resilient cloud hosted services. Not to mention that in most cases you're dealing with users who don't have robust, resilient internet connections. Try explaining to users that if the power and internet are down their mobile app might still work, but it's not going to be able to connect to the device on the site that has no power or internet. In our case we sell an add-on for the POE device that lets them plug two SIM cards in (we also sell cheap data-only plans from two different physical networks). Plus our devices have a battery in them. So at least in theory when things go wrong they have to go wrong with multiple locations of two cloud providers (our end), or alternatively two or three different ways to connect to the internet (their end). But that all costs money, and even more money if you want to test them regularly. OTOH, I expect AutoCAD to have that money and to spend it. There's no reason for them not to have servers on all three major cloud platforms and either automatically or manually switch to whichever is available. The customer should not have to deal with it. Especially when it's "authorise at startup", you should be able to fall back to using your phone as a hotspot for a few minutes if you have to.

Dongles never worked anyway, with anything remotely mainstream the software was always cracked. Didn't matter because as has been gone over many times, companies using this stuff buy their software, the dongle is just a useless security theater item that makes certain types of people feel better. The rental software can't be hacked, sure, but that doesn't even matter. When it's a product that is not in a class of its own, the rental model will result in far more lost customers than piracy ever did.

EAGLE feature wise is far more powerful than it's ever been and all this has happened in less than a year.

IIRC, you released V7 back in 2014. So, are you saying that CadSoft fell asleep with the advent of V7 and did absolutely nothing for a next major release? Everything new is Autodesk? Not so easy to believe for me.

...Never say from these waters I will not drink. I haven't heard anyone say they have actually tried the latest 8.1.1 here. You may discover that it's not what you thought it was. EAGLE's file format is XML so you are never truly locked in as can be seen by all of the converters available in other tools. You really have nothing to lose by trying it and then forming an informed opinion. ...

Suppose you had a v7.7 user that signed up for autodesk eagle for a year (or whatever) and proceeded in earnest to give v8.1.1 a chance.

They work with it for a year and decide it's not worth the licensing hassle, or cost for added features, or perhaps some forced upgrade along the way introduces instability with their platform or graphics card. Whatever the reason, they don't want to use the new version anymore.

Over the course of the year they have been saving their work in the native XML format. It's unavoidable that the format of the XML files will be continuously enhanced by autodesk to support saving of files that were produced using the new features.

What guarantees can autodesk make that a user can drop back to 7.7 and not lose a year of work because the XML files are no longer backwards compatible? Sure the new features won't work, but what survives in a .BRD/.SCH file in a downgrade from 8.1.1 to 7.7? And I mean specifically.

I'm interested in the new modularity feature, but not at the cost of a lock in. I'm not seeing your "nothing to lose" scenario. Please explain how it could work with no risk.

Hi MarkL,

Thanks for bringing this up. There will be an official response to this in the near term so I don't want to disclose anything yet. However, I can say that the scenario you are explicitly describing will be addressed and in a manner I feel you and most of our legacy users will find acceptable. I know how you guys feel about this whole situation right now, I've been reading all of the posts and answering some of them. I feel confident that the official response will be something you will like, especially in light of the last few months.The response I'm referring will not be a statement from one of our staff, but something you will see in hard substance in EAGLE itself. Just hang tight for a little bit longer.

Separate from that forthcoming response, my comment about the lockin referred to the fact that because our format is a documented XML format many tools (you guys know who they are) have already implemented EAGLE importers and even if we did add new items to the XML structure, it's likely that those tools would keep their importers current, it's too easy not to. So should a user decide they want to move to another tool, their data could be transferred into whatever new tool they wanted to use. Obviously you would still have to deal with a new learning curve so that's not ideal, but at the very least you would still have your IP.

Like I said, keep an eye out for an official response to your scenario. In fact once it's out, I'll come here and announce it so you guys can check it out. @macegr I pretty sure this official response will answer some of your concerns as well.

It appears to be 99.9% similar to Eagle 7, plus an internet-tied login wall. No compelling reason or tasty new features, I am already familiar with Eagle and there is nothing new to try.

The Autodesk license still says I will lose access to my Eagle 7 license if I upgrade to Eagle 8, in much the same way that I no longer have an Eagle 5 license after upgrading to Eagle 7. I realize you have said differently on the forums, but the legal document still says otherwise.

Hi macegr,

I'm happy to see you are still here. Your first point lets me know you still haven't played with it. There's been a lot of changes and I have had a hard time keeping up with some of them(and I support the tool for a living). I've seen your work so I know you are a strong EAGLE user, but I think even you would be surprised by all of usage improvements and details that have been cleaned up or improved, not to mention the major features that have come in.

In regards to your second point, we've already discussed it at length however there is one small piece of information you have wrong. Your V7 license DOES allow you to use V5 in fact it allows you to use all version prior to V7. You can try it out for yourself, open up V5 and apply your V7 key file and installation code, let me know if you need them to be resent. You didn't lose 5 when you bought V7. You won't lose V7 by trying Autodesk EAGLE either, however like I mentioned in my reply to MarkL I think this concern will be laid to rest shortly.

EAGLE feature wise is far more powerful than it's ever been and all this has happened in less than a year.

IIRC, you released V7 back in 2014. So, are you saying that CadSoft fell asleep with the advent of V7 and did absolutely nothing for a next major release? Everything new is Autodesk? Not so easy to believe for me.

Hi ReneK,

I hope you're having a good day today. I would never want to imply that our devs did nothing during the V7 release cycle. My point was to say that if you were to look at the UPDATE_en.txt (UPDATE_de.txt if you speak german) and compared what was released in the V7 series of EAGLE to what was released in the last few months of Autodesk EAGLE you would notice a big difference in the breadth and depth of development. This is mostly do to the increased manpower we now have at Autodesk.

However, I disagree that Autodesk has mistreated you in anyway. Technically, you haven't lost anything. You still have the V7.7 license you originally paid for and no one will be taking that away from you. The subscription change only applies to Autodesk EAGLE, so you still have exactly what you paid for.

Autodesk does care about it's customers to do othewise just doesn't make business sense.

It was said by your colleague that Eagle should not go subscription.There was no advance warning or grace period so that we could buy extra V7 licenses.We got completely taken by surprise and now, if we want to hire another engineer, we don't haveenough licenses and we will be forced to switched to another package.I call that a mistreatment.

The improvements in EAGLE are a testament to that, the fact that I'm here replying is also testament to that. EAGLE feature wise is far more powerful than it's ever been and all this has happened in less than a year. I know you've been copying issues from the Autodesk forum and posting them here, however you haven't been following up on the resolution of those issues. When Autodesk EAGLE first released it's stability wasn't what users were used to with V7 and prior. On the flip side, there wasn't as much change in EAGLE's codebase prior to Autodesk either so stability was easier to preserve. With that said many of the linux issues have or are being ironed out and every release is better than the last in terms of stability(I run a Linux Mint 18 box with MATE 1.14.2 desktop here). I think there is large Linux market that is a unique opportunity for us to capitalize on, since no other commercial tool natively supports linux(keyword: commercial, KiCAD and GEDA are not commercial entities).

The facts are that Eagle V6 & V7 were rock stable on all major Linux distro's.V8 is a crash galore. And in addition, autodesk is going to limit the number of supported Linux distro's,something that never was a problem in the past.

Never say from these waters I will not drink. I haven't heard anyone say they have actually tried the latest 8.1.1 here. You may discover that it's not what you thought it was. EAGLE's file format is XML so you are never truly locked in as can be seen by all of the converters available in other tools. You really have nothing to lose by trying it and then forming an informed opinion.

Just my 2 cents, if they are even worth that much. If you try it and run into any problems I'm here to help.

Subscription is not an option. It is not negotiable. For arguments read the 300+ posts.

Just a quick field report from a long time Eagle user, in case someone wants to switch. I created a breakout board in KiCad as a simple demo project and was learning the program while doing it (mostly by watching Youtube videos and googling for questions how things work in KiCad that I know from Eagle). Including some time playing with it previously, I needed about two days to do this. I think with the next board I won't be much slower than with Eagle.

BTW, has Eagle now an integrated 3D view which you can interactively rotate and zoom, as in KiCad? I really like the improved 3D view of the latest stable KiCad release 4.0.6, which I compiled from source. My board (I know, I should add 3D models for the components) :

But the best 3D view has Altium Designer, because you can even edit your board in the 3D view.

I have used 3D PCB design (manually) a lot, but usually because the PCBs themselves are critical to the design. It's also handy when trying to make something fit an enclosure...you know, so that your project is finished. In an enclosure.

What do you use 3D view at all? Imho it is pretty useless, for the amount of work you need to do to create part models.

It doesn't need to win an art price, just the right dimensions are good enough to see if it fits somewhere. I just tried it for my circuit and created 3D models for the crystal and the QFN IC:

Took me a minute for the IC and two minutes for the crystal with ViaCAD Pro and basic shapes and boolean operations. Then export to VRL (format version 2, because KiCad crashed with version 1) and add it to the footprints with a mouse click. Strangely the VRL-export was in cm, but KiCad assumed inch, but you can enter a scaling factor in KiCad. The pin headers and cap was already available in KiCad, I just didn't configure the right path, because I compiled it from source. The pads for the cap are bigger than usual, because I chose the hand-solderable footprint variant.

What do you use 3D view at all? Imho it is pretty useless, for the amount of work you need to do to create part models.

Even without 3d models 3d view can be very useful, I often spot problems or areas I could improve in the 3d view which were not so obvious in the 2d layout view alone, I can't explain why satisfactorily, but that is the case.

Adding models, even rough ones, allows you to see even more problems, mostly to do with "yeah I'm never going to get an iron tip into there" for me.

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As I responded to the customer who originally posted that image on the Autodesk forums, that is a bogus screen. Autodesk doesn't touch anything on your machine, we have already reported that issue to the appropriate team at Autodesk and they are working on correcting it.

Autodesk is the United Airlines of software companies, tone deaf, and won't wake up until they realize the cash invested into Eagle is going up in a bonfire.

Are you not assuming that assuming there is someone at Autodesk who will actually eat responsibility for these decisions? Once a corp pushes out all of the talent which got it to where it is at its peak and replaces them with mediocre nobodies, every time something goes wrong, each and every person in the chain will throw their hands up into the air in a fit of despair and cry "I had nothing to do with this. It's not my fault (nothing is ever my fault)! This wasn't a part of my job!" The buck will continuously get passed and suddenly no one had anything to do with this being a cockup. When upper management needs someone to pin the blame on, the guys in the middle will find a sacrificial lamb below them. It'll probably be Jorge in this case, in spite of the fact he's the only one in the trenches who is actively trying to do right by everyone. Perhaps it isn't in spite, but because of.

When a company switches to 'acquire your way to success,' it has ceased to be an innovator as there is no one left inside the company to really innovate. Innovation requires someone to be responsible for the success or failure of an idea.

It was said by your colleague that Eagle should not go subscription.There was no advance warning or grace period so that we could buy extra V7 licenses.We got completely taken by surprise and now, if we want to hire another engineer, we don't haveenough licenses and we will be forced to switched to another package.

Subscription is not an option. It is not negotiable. For arguments read the 300+ posts.

In Today's news, I see Mentor have made a significant line in the sand around Subscription, and the 'market reaction' to this...

Seems they are keen to assist AutoDesk down the slippery slope, by choosing another path... and avoiding the Subscription tar-pit ...

Mentor eliminated the annual license subscription for the new PADS MakerPro edition in favor of a 'license once and use forever' license and made the new PADS Maker edition a totally free license. Complete desktop environment with no requirement for cloud storage or community IP sharing

Unclear if that 4 signal layers of EAGLE Standard includes additional 2 planes, as PADS Maker does, but clearly the PADS free version chops the legs off Free Eagle, and undercuts EAGLE Standard. Eagle premium is a little above PADS, in layers, but who in the maker area pushes over 8 layers ?

I also find this You can import schematics and symbols from a third party tool. Files can be imported from the following software versions:Altium Protel 99, DXP, 2004, 2006, AD6P-CAD 200xCADStar V5–V9OrCAD 7.2–16.6Eagle 6.0 or greater andYou can import PCB files from third party tools by using the Import Translator (File > Import, then select the relevant software) in PADS Maker Layout. Files can be imported from the following software versions:Altium Protel 99, DXP, 2004, 2006, AD6P-CAD 200xCADStar V5–V9OrCAD Board Files 7.2–16.2{ no mention of eagle PCB paths yet ?}

Of course, Mentor play the silly games of not supporting Import of PADS Layout designs to PADS Maker Layout, but these third party pathways give a clue of a dual hop path..

Update: Another page has this detail..

What happens when my license subscription runs out?Student and Maker versions run out after 1 year. You may go back to Digi-Key to purchase the Maker Pro license (http://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=mentor%20graphics). Check back with Digi-Key and Mentor Graphics to see if licenses are available.

Ouch - so after 12 months, you drop dead, or pay $$$ I've no idea what "Check back with Digi-Key and Mentor Graphics to see if licenses are available" means, is that based on the market push-back, we may extend the free ??WTF? That seems just as brain-dead as Autodesk - maybe worse, as even the free version expires ?!?

"What happens when my license subscription runs out?Student and Maker versions run out after 1 year. You may go back to Digi-Key to purchase the Maker Pro license (http://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=mentor%20graphics). Check back with Digi-Key and Mentor Graphics to see if licenses are available."

Their Press release however, claims this :PADS Maker is offered through a free, annual, renewable license.

Anyone know for surewhich statement is true ?

Other issues : I know IC vendors who use PADS, who would be interested in publishing their Eval Boards in PADS Maker form.

Oops, Mentor explicitly block that pathway as PADS maker cannot read a Full PADS design, and no mention of PADS being able to export to PADS maker.

Such are the issues when Corporate's try to be too clever over turf protection, the end result is silliness like having to go via a competitors package, to move between two Mentor ones !!

Last one with perpetual license. First one with a free, annual, renewable license.It's all described in their press release.

No, that is not the cause of the confusion. I am pretty sure every poster above has understood that difference.

Please read the above posts again, especially the one from PCB.Wiz with the links it provides. All statements refer to the non-Pro version. (Except for the side note from Mentor that one can upgrade to Pro once the 1-year non-Pro license expires.)

No, that is not the cause of the confusion. I am pretty sure every poster above has understood that difference. Please read the above posts again, especially the one from PCB.Wiz with the links it provides. All statements refer to the non-Pro version. (Except for the side note from Mentor that one can upgrade to Pro once the 1-year non-Pro license expires.)

[...] PADS Maker is offered through a free, annual, renewable license. PADS MakerPro adds one year of enhanced support and increased design capacity, including additional layers and design size, for a one-time charge of $499. [...] Mentor eliminated the annual license subscription for the new PADS MakerPro edition in favor of a 'license once and use forever' license and made the new PADS Maker edition a totally free license. [...]

[...]LicensingWhat type of licensing does PADS Maker software use?Student and Maker version licenses are good for one year while Maker Pro purchased licenses are perpetual. [...]

It's all pretty clear.

Sure, until you keep reading the same link and hit these comments (emphasis added)

These licenses are bound to specific personal computers or workstations, but you can rehost to different machines twice during a license period.What happens when my license subscription runs out?Student and Maker versions run out after 1 year. You may go back to Digi-Key to purchase the Maker Pro license (http://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=mentor%20graphics).Check back with Digi-Key and Mentor Graphics to see if licenses are available.

leads to some obvious questions...a) Why is there any limit on rehosting a free license ?b) what exactly does "when my license subscription runs out? ... Check back with Digi-Key and Mentor Graphics to see if licenses are available." mean ?

Seems to be flip-flapping on the river bank, as predicted. You get a lot of lively activity when you throw a fish on dry land, but pretty soon, it stops moving and becomes somebody's lunch. The official forums are packed with new problems appearing every minute, and even some of the former pennant-wavers are voicing exasperation with the fails du jour. They were all just told that Autodesk is going to dedicate not just one minute, not just one hour, or a day, but in self-stated "BRAVERY" they will focus on fixing 15-year-old bugs instead of creating toy ULP-based features FOR AN ENTIRE SOLID UNINTERRUPTED WEEK. The utter madmen and madwomen! Can you imagine any other ECAD company deciding to use one whole week out of a year for the express purposes of bugfixes? At least they're not halting "development" for TWO weeks, because what would they do with the extra time after fixing One (1) Bug...get started on the barest hint of stability testing and quality control or something? Nah that's boring, do the bugfix week and get back to breaking internet authentication and writing ULPs to draw emoji on your silkscreen or replace the UI with Fritzing.

What worries me most is that they don't seem to have a clue about deploying software.The problems started mainly because somebody thought it was a good idea to- not to link static anymore (the Qt libraries)- start to play with OpenGL

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

Seems to be flip-flapping on the river bank, as predicted. You get a lot of lively activity when you throw a fish on dry land, but pretty soon, it stops moving and becomes somebody's lunch. The official forums are packed with new problems appearing every minute, and even some of the former pennant-wavers are voicing exasperation with the fails du jour. They were all just told that Autodesk is going to dedicate not just one minute, not just one hour, or a day, but in self-stated "BRAVERY" they will focus on fixing 15-year-old bugs instead of creating toy ULP-based features FOR AN ENTIRE SOLID UNINTERRUPTED WEEK. The utter madmen and madwomen! Can you imagine any other ECAD company deciding to use one whole week out of a year for the express purposes of bugfixes? At least they're not halting "development" for TWO weeks, because what would they do with the extra time after fixing One (1) Bug...get started on the barest hint of stability testing and quality control or something? Nah that's boring, do the bugfix week and get back to breaking internet authentication and writing ULPs to draw emoji on your silkscreen or replace the UI with Fritzing.

It would seem so. Everyone I know who was using Eagle has either switched to another EDA or is sticking with the last version they have. I can't see there being many folks interested in renting it when there are other products available that are just as good.

...Never say from these waters I will not drink. I haven't heard anyone say they have actually tried the latest 8.1.1 here. You may discover that it's not what you thought it was. EAGLE's file format is XML so you are never truly locked in as can be seen by all of the converters available in other tools. You really have nothing to lose by trying it and then forming an informed opinion. ...

Suppose you had a v7.7 user that signed up for autodesk eagle for a year (or whatever) and proceeded in earnest to give v8.1.1 a chance.

They work with it for a year and decide it's not worth the licensing hassle, or cost for added features, or perhaps some forced upgrade along the way introduces instability with their platform or graphics card. Whatever the reason, they don't want to use the new version anymore.

Over the course of the year they have been saving their work in the native XML format. It's unavoidable that the format of the XML files will be continuously enhanced by autodesk to support saving of files that were produced using the new features.

What guarantees can autodesk make that a user can drop back to 7.7 and not lose a year of work because the XML files are no longer backwards compatible? Sure the new features won't work, but what survives in a .BRD/.SCH file in a downgrade from 8.1.1 to 7.7? And I mean specifically.

I'm interested in the new modularity feature, but not at the cost of a lock in. I'm not seeing your "nothing to lose" scenario. Please explain how it could work with no risk.

Hello All,

I had previously mentioned that there would be a response to the above quoted concern and that I would post it once it was available. See the attached picture below.

This is the answer, if ever you wanted to switch back you would use this function to export your design files to a 8.1.1 or earlier format. EAGLE V8.2.0 was the first version of EAGLE to introduce a change to the XML structure with the online libraries feature. New features that affect the XML will converted to something that older version of EAGLE can understand to the extent possible(Hierarchy is what comes to mind here).

For those of you who where concerned about legalese and Autodesk coming after you think about what this feature implies for you as well. Would Autodesk implement this feature if there was some legal problem with a user using V7.7? Many of those working with V8 still keep and sometimes fall back to V7.7 when issues that affect their workflow have come up. It's thanks to their efforts that the week of only bug fixing was declared. A week may not sound like much, but you would be surprised what can be accomplished in that time frame with the team we have now. In any case you guys will be the judge of whether that was successful or not. I hope that this helps those who have not tried EAGLE V8 for whatever reason, to feel more comfortable in trying it out.

I hope this information is useful and if not, at least I kept my word.

Let me know if there is anything I can do for you guys(keep in mind what I can actually do )

What was up with the "Answer Day" thingee? Was it a special forum section or something? 'Cause I didn't see any more traffic than usual.

Has EAGLE lost its relevance? I'd've at least expected a few posts asking if they'd come to their senses already regarding licencing, but I suppose that's

Hi latigid,

For EAGLE, you weren't going to see much difference. The goal of answer day is to get Autodesk employees to be more involved with the respective tools they serve. Since I'm on the Autodesk forums practically my entire workday there wasn't going to be much of a difference. Most of our users already know that the EAGLE autodesk forum is actively monitored so there is no rush to post questions. With that said, the Autodesk EAGLE forums have been pretty active. In the 4 months it's been operating we have seen about 3200 posts which is pretty good for such a short time span, it's kept me busy.

There was no special forum section or anything just the normal forums with Autodesk employees who committed to be active that day.

I hope that this helps those who have not tried EAGLE V8 for whatever reason, to feel more comfortable in trying it out.

Nah, for me and apparently a few others, it doesn't matter how good it might be as long as you stick to the subscription model - which you (Autodesk) said wasn't even on the horizon just 6 months prior to doing a full 180°.

IMO that goes to show that the horizon really isn't that far away in your case, implying you might just ditch the whole thing 6 months from now, or you just plain out lied to your customers who pretty much immediately raised the very concern of the software going subscription. Neither is very comforting.

Then again, if it was going to happen it was probably better it did so sooner than later. Oh well, the ship has sailed, I gave my money to Altium.

I hope that this helps those who have not tried EAGLE V8 for whatever reason, to feel more comfortable in trying it out.

Nah, for me and apparently a few others, it doesn't matter how good it might be as long as you stick to the subscription model - which you (Autodesk) said wasn't even on the horizon just 6 months prior to doing a full 180°.

IMO that goes to show that the horizon really isn't that far away in your case, implying you might just ditch the whole thing 6 months from now, or you just plain out lied to your customers who pretty much immediately raised the very concern of the software going subscription. Neither is very comforting.

Then again, if it was going to happen it was probably better it did so sooner than later. Oh well, the ship has sailed, I gave my money to Altium.

I couldn't have said it better.

We still have to decide if it's going to be Altium or another package like Orcad...

Btw, what pisses me off as well is that, in the past, the license, was also valid for older versions.Now, the new subscription model is not valid for older versions prior to V8.They really want you to eat their shit. No way that that is going to happen.

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The difference between theory and practice is less in theory thanthe difference between theory and practice in practice.Expensive tools cannot compensate for lack of experience.

Btw, what pisses me off as well is that, in the past, the license, was also valid for older versions.Now, the new subscription model is not valid for older versions prior to V8.They really want you to eat their shit. No way that that is going to happen.

Subscription model = forever stuck and pay ransom "periodically" as long you want to use it.

The old offline software "installation" model that once installed, you can use it as long as you like is no longer valid with this business model, as simple as that.

Your problem is not technical, its purely new business model that takes time for them to cook it up in the conversion process from old to new, and this time frame allowance while they're cooking it, is what they expect from all the current old version users willing to sacrifice patiently wait and struggle, like you've been experiencing since the 1st post of this thread.

Take note again the date of the 1st post of this thread, just to remind yourself.

Time to make a decision, either to abandon boat or stuck .. errr stay.

Btw, what pisses me off as well is that, in the past, the license, was also valid for older versions.Now, the new subscription model is not valid for older versions prior to V8.They really want you to eat their shit. No way that that is going to happen.

Subscription model = forever stuck and pay ransom "periodically" as long you want to use it.

The old offline software "installation" model that once installed, you can use it as long as you like is no longer valid with this business model, as simple as that.

Your problem is not technical, its purely new business model that takes time for them to cook it up in the conversion process from old to new, and this time frame allowance while they're cooking it, is what they expect from all the current old version users willing to sacrifice patiently wait and struggle, like you've been experiencing since the 1st post of this thread.

Take note again the date of the 1st post of this thread, just to remind yourself.

Time to make a decision, either to abandon boat or stuck .. errr stay.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Autodesk have pulled this kind of crap. They didn't learn before with other products that they acquired and then destroyed, so I doubt that they will learn now.

I, like so many others, are in the same boat, though in my case, my gripe is not so much with a subscription based model (that I'm actually in favour of), its the constant connection requirement. When you spend 6-8 weeks in the middle of no-where with bugger all internet connectivity .. how is that supposed to work.

I even went so far as to ask Matt that, and surprise surprise ... the silence has been deafening.

Of course, one should not be surprised as this is the same individual who outright said that what has now transpired was unlikely to happen so yeah ... take that with a very large grain of salt.

The only one at Autodesk who can hold their head high with any degree of pride is Jorge. He at least has had the decency to call me to explain what was (and wasn't happening) and possible options.

The process (and cost) of transitioning to an alternate tool has so far been a real bitch.

I hope that this helps those who have not tried EAGLE V8 for whatever reason, to feel more comfortable in trying it out.

Nah, for me and apparently a few others, it doesn't matter how good it might be as long as you stick to the subscription model - which you (Autodesk) said wasn't even on the horizon just 6 months prior to doing a full 180°.

With KiCAD developing really quickly and being available for free (not counting work hours for converting libraries, schematics and boards of course), the managers at Autodesk didn't have much choice if they ever wanted to go for a subscription model. People may be willing to do the switch now but in 2 or 3 years, when KiCAD is running circles around Eagle (which it appears to already be doing for certain features), the number of people willing to be milked would probably be much less. So it probably was now or never.

That however is assuming that Eagle-using companies are willing to switch to KiCAD. I wouldn't be surprised to see consulting companies provide KiCAD support to allow managers to make the switch.

I even went so far as to ask Matt that, and surprise surprise ... the silence has been deafening.

I used to live in southern California (couldn't take it, had to leave) and I dealt with many probably well-meaning, but very ineffectual people who never accomplished anything, the kind that dealt with problems by ignoring them until they went away, while continuously pointing out how busy they were, claiming they were doing great things. The way Matt swoops in, interacts on the forums, then disappears, just makes me think that he's a seagull manager...

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The only one at Autodesk who can hold their head high with any degree of pride is Jorge.